how narrow can I go?

[huntsman247]

Hey all, fairly new here and got a question.  Been building bows for awhile now, mostly self as of late.   At any rate I have an older maple core with glass laminations on the face and back longbow.  The bow is way to heavy for me to work into (bad shoulders); I read here somewhere that I can lower draw weight by narrowing of the limbs.  I would like to know how narrow can I go with a laminated bow and still be safe?  Appreciate any and all responses; Thanks

[K30bowfisher]

The answer is: it depends, how much weight do you need to drop?

You will loose more weight by sanding the thickness of the glass evenly on belly and back evenly over the entire length of the limbs than you can by narrowing the width. Healthy rounding of the limb edges can drop a pound or two. Trapping the limbs can possibly drop 5 or more pounds without too much trouble.

[JamesV]

K30 is right, sanding the glass is your best bet along with rounding the edges of the limbs. Use 220 grit to get to the poundage you want, use a block sander to keep the glass uniform while sanding. Then go to a very fine paper to finish up.

[Roy Steele]

What weight you want.

[JJB]

I've read that if you want to remove a certain percentage, say 10% for example, of the total original weight you would remove 5% from each side of the limb (very slowly and carefully).  I'm actually in the process of doing this for the first time and it's worked great for me.  I've removed all the weight I wanted and am now going to start finishing it up.  This is on a recurve but discussion I was following talked about both recurves and longbows.  I'd be reluctant to remove more than 10-15%.  I'd also be interested in what others do, I have a few more bows that are a bit heavy.

[No-sage]

I took 15lbs off of a longbow by narrowing the limbs only.  I took off about 1/4 total, 1/8" off each side.

Tiller stayed exactly the same.

[huntsman247]

Great answers all, limbs already "trap" by design.  No-sage, that is about the poundage I am looking to drop and have already begun the marking process to remove approx. 1/8" from each side; just wasn't sure if that was the approach I wanted to take.  It had occured to me to take off some glass from the belly and back.  Anyone ever completely remove the glass from either the belly or the back, and would that work?  What do you think?